Politics in Taiwan is lively and often a good spectator sport. Please make sure that the schoolboy shenanigans stay in the Legislative Assembly and not in the forums here at Taiwaneasia, ok? The moderators thank you in advance for your cooperation!

The kids upstairs, who have been to every pride parade and event, were screaming as if it was a world cup final game... I think they are getting drunk now.

I do not think the DPP deserved such a catastrophe. I can't believe the people swallowed the messages of doom and gloom «vote for us to save Taiwan,». I think the siren call of riches is what dooms them all the time.

"Lo urgente no deja tiempo para lo importante". MafaldaNone of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else

The kids upstairs, who have been to every pride parade and event, were screaming as if it was a world cup final game... I think they are getting drunk now.

I do not think the DPP deserved such a catastrophe. I can't believe the people swallowed the messages of doom and gloom «vote for us to save Taiwan,». I think the siren call of riches is what dooms them all the time.

Old fuckers were always going to go out in their droves to vote down the "homos". The youngsters were never going to go out and do their duty, because Pokemon. Such is life. We'll have to wait for the old fuckers to die. Give it 25 years.

Edit: For the record, I voted for marriage equality, but I did vote against gay education in schools etc.

The DPP are really going to get punished by younger voters for the complete and utter betrayal when it comes to marriage rights.

I don't understand what you mean. The DPP's "complete and utter betrayal" of marriage rights? What? The DPP certainly had some questionable electoral strategies (most notably running Yao and letting him attack Ko so much, and not doing more early again Han Guo-yu (韓國瑜)), but not using its majority in the Legislature to push through something that the courts had already said will happen soon regardless is not among them. You did see the numbers in the referendums, right? The vote totals were nowhere near close. In fact, they were more than landslides; they were massacres. Full-on DPP support for marriage equality wouldn't have won the day; it would just have caused DPP candidates to lose even more votes.

Also, young people don't vote at high levels. There aren't many of them, relatively speaking. And where exactly would young people go to stick it to the DPP and push for equal rights? The KMT? The New Power Party (I don't know what positions they took officially) won 2.5% of the votes in the city/county council elections. No other party made it past even 1%.

Support for equal marriage was part of Tsai's platform in 2016 when running, then they did nothing for a year. The courts told them to change the law, and they again did nothing for 18 months. And now something less than equality will be what people end up with.

In 2020, I suspect a lot of young people will just stay home. Unless someone like Ko runs as independent, that is.

The DPP is no more of a human rights party than the KMT is. That a husbandless leader of the DPP can`t even finesse this one through her own Party and voter base (who are socially conservative and yet falsely use the name Progressive) is really telling. The straw-hat wearing, whisbih-drinking, die hard independence minded DPP voter in the South is likely also extremely anti-gay while the New Party pan-blue hipster in Taipei is probably pretty tolerant.

By voting negatively in the referendum against gay rights (which should be automatic for marriage and education in schools), Taiwan showed it is culturally more attuned to China than the Western democracies it so-called wants to emulate on many fronts (just not gay rights).

Will this popular vote make chief justices backtrack on the legal rulings that require this to become legal?

You're actually a nihilistic sociopath wrapped up in a Canadian flag pretending to be some giant intellect tapping away from a southern French shed.---Broonale

The DPP are really going to get punished by younger voters for the complete and utter betrayal when it comes to marriage rights.

No they're not. The only people who care about this issue is a smallish fraction of gay people, ie., about 1% of the population, if that, and even they are more concerned (I would imagine) about their salaries, the cost of housing, potential conflict with China, and similar real-world issues. Broadly speaking, gay people get a lot less hassle in Taiwan than in most countries, and marriage is a fairly mundane thing here anyway, amounting to little more than a big expensive party and a piece of paper signed at the household registration office.

Under these conditions, if people think "marriage equality" (whatever that even means) is an important social problem - important enough to swing the way they vote - then they've got their priorities wrong. The amount of intellectual horsepower available to our policymakers is in short supply as it is, and it would be best focused on things that (a) actually have some practical relevance for the majority and (b) don't waste a lot of time on debate.

The DPP got creamed because they appear to offer nothing of value to the electorate. Not because of their stance on marriage rights.

Toad wrote: The only people who care about this issue is a smallish fraction of gay people, ie., about 1% of the population, if that,

On prevalence of LGB people in society, if you check Wiki you get estimates varying between 2.2 - 3.2%, so 1% is a lowball estimate. Maybe a lot of these don't plan on marriage, but they do care about their civil rights in general.

And like many other countries, there are of course many straight people concerned about LGBT rights.

I'm not a subset of the gay population; but I do care about the issue and am disappointed with how the vote came out -- but was surprised only in terms of the enormously lopsided margin.

At least for the next few election cycles, anyone in Taiwan who wants to make themselves a single-issue voter in support of marriage equality is going to lose ... and will foolishly deprive themselves of votes toward affecting other significant public policies. And Taiwan has no shortage of important issues to work out.

Toad wrote: The only people who care about this issue is a smallish fraction of gay people, ie., about 1% of the population, if that,

On prevalence of LGB people in society, if you check Wiki you get estimates varying between 2.2 - 3.2%, so 1% is a lowball estimate. Maybe a lot of these don't plan on marriage, but they do care about their civil rights in general.

1% was my estimate of people who are gay AND consider gay marriage a topic important enough to swing their vote. Not just gay people.

I'm afraid I have very little time for the concept of "civil rights", or indeed "rights" in general. It sounds noble and progressive, but talk of "rights" is usually just a substitute for thinking about the nuances of some complex problem.

anyone in Taiwan who wants to make themselves a single-issue voter in support of marriage equality is going to lose ... and will foolishly deprive themselves of votes toward affecting other significant public policies. And Taiwan has no shortage of important issues to work out.

My point exactly. Expecting political parties to focus on dozens of minority-group problems is a recipe for disaster. By its nature a government paints in broad strokes, and you can see this obsession with "minority rights", "discrimination", and "equality" causing immense problems with governance in Western Europe. Enormous debates blow up over complete non-issues, which take away time and energy from critically-important ones.